The present invention relates to an improved and unique structural arrangement on a rectangular sheet to provide usable television program information with advertising contained with the television programming.
In programs of this type, it has been conventional to provide weekly television program sheets to users either delivered with other publications or sold separately which provides the user with television listings, and this vehicle is provided to included advertising material so that the television viewer will be subjected to the advertising information when viewing the program listing. Presently, newspapers, shoppers and other T.V. data products are designed in a magazine format, whether that be in full or small tabloid size using standard or small magazine (saddle-stitched) techniques.
An essential of these formats is that the pages must be turned or folded over in order to get the T.V. program information. A disadvantage of this format to an advertiser is that unless the advertiser purchases the front or back cover location, the exposure to readers is generally limited to the specific page usage. That is, an ad on Tuesday's listings is not seen before Tuesday or on the day after the listings have application. Therefore, whereas the advertiser has been sold a media with seven-day usage possibilities, in fact, only one day exposure is provided, and essentially each ad is a partially wasted space from the standpoint of the provision of paper and print.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a unique program sheet structure which has a unique folding and printing arrangement that gives exposure to the reader with almost every use, and in fact, normal usage will compel exposure of all of the ads to the user for essentially seven days a week rather than only on one day of the week.
In radio and T.V. guides such as heretofore used with many newspapers, the service is not self-paying or self-amortizing, and the publishers will print the guide on a large sheet of paper without keying advertising to it because there has been no convenient or useful arrangement accessible which would insure the success of the advertising messages. In certain metropolitan areas where special T.V. guides are printed, this often requires special press runs where even though advertising is included, it is not a paying proposition with respect to the publisher. The fact that small T.V. guides which are conveniently usable are arranged so that a daily programming is contained on each page, involves exposure by the reader to the advertising contained on the page only one day a week, and consequently, advertising space becomes more expensive than the results would justify. It is desirable to obtain a T.V. guide that is convenient for the user to utilize, can be run off on an economical size press run, can be used by medium and small size newspapers as a source of advertising revenue and give multiple exposures to all members of the family more than one time a week.
It is accordingly a further object of the invention to provide an improved T.V. guide construction which avoids the disadvantages present in arrangements heretofore used and which utilizes a fold sequence and program location arrangement such that the user is essentially compelled to view the printed advertising surfaces with each use and which results in a self-indexing feature providing improved surface and better usage for the user along with the simultaneous attainment of increased advertising exposure.
Other objects, advantages and features will become more apparent with the teaching of the principles of the invention in connection with the disclosure of the preferred embodiment thereof in the specification, claims and drawings, in which: